Fake Android Anti-Virus App Was a "Mistake" the Developers Claim

Published on: 10th Apr 2014

Note -- this news article is more than a year old.

The developer of a popular anti virus app for Android smartphones that appeared to do absolutely nothing, and was still downloaded over 30,000 times, says that the app should never have been put for sale on the Google Play app store.

The Android app, called Virus Shield promised to offer protection from
viruses and malware, but do so without the battery draining effect that some
anti-virus software apps can suffer from.

However analysis of the app found that apart from changing its icon when the
virus protection was activated, it actually didn't do anything whatsoever.

The app developer, Deviant Solutions, founded by Jesse Carter says that the
app should never have been uploaded to the app store as it was just a User
Interface concept being worked on by a company designer.

He said that he pulled the app as soon as he saw the report about it being a
fake in the Android Police website.

"One of our developers simply made a foolish mistake," Carter told
the Guardian. "The app version that was decompiled by AndroidPolice
was not intended to be released. It was an early placeholder that our ui
designer created. There was a mix-up between the version that contained the
antivirus code for our app."

However, there is still confusion about how a simple UI was compiled into the
Android code and then uploaded to the Google Play store -- none of which are
simply "click and forget" processes.

It's estimated that the fake app generated around US$90,000 in revenue, which
Carter says he will be refunding to the buyers.